Gbaji has no clue what Appeal to Authority means. It's just a phrase he picked up along the way and parrots now and then when he wants to feel important. If someone says "My doctor says I have cancer", you don't yell "Appeal to Authority!" and pretend that your opinion on their health has equal weight. Likewise, when discussing a political or social theory, referring to the literal author of that theory and his writings about it is certainly not an "Appeal to Authority", it's common sense.

It hardly matters anyway. I said that Gbaji finds stuff to fit his notion of the world and rejects (or ignores) anything else and his big comeback was to say "It's that this study confirms what I'd been observing myself. I frankly don't care what he writes about in his book in addition to this." I mean, I couldn't have crafted a more fitting response if I tried for a week.

It's that this study confirms what I'd been observing myself. I frankly don't care what he writes about in his book in addition to this.

Confirmation bias is a **** of a drug

Cross thread whatever... That's not confirmation bias. It's just plain confirmation. If you think it's biased, you have to provide other sources of data/facts that counter it *and* I would have to simply ignore those other sources. BTW, "ignore" does not mean "counter", but actually just plain refuse to acknowledge that other sources of data/fact/whatever exist at all.

It's just a phrase he picked up along the way and parrots now and then when he wants to feel important. If someone says "My doctor says I have cancer", you don't yell "Appeal to Authority!" and pretend that your opinion on their health has equal weight. Likewise, when discussing a political or social theory, referring to the literal author of that theory and his writings about it is certainly not an "Appeal to Authority", it's common sense.

That's not what I meant. I was talking about how you form an opinion about the subject matter itself because you read a book by someone who said something. It's not about him being an authority on his own book, but that you assume he is an authority on the subject because he wrote a book.

I formed my own opinion about conservative and liberal language and viewpoint differences a couple decades ago, based on my own observations. I did not need some expert to tell me this. I didn't wait for someone to write a book to tell me what my opinion about this subject should be.

That's what I mean by appeal to authority. To me, the study he did while researching his book provides a set of data which confirms something I've believed to be true for a long time. I literally don't care what else he put into the book, because I'm not deriving my position on the issue from his book. I already have a position. The study he did and the data generated by the study supports my position.

You're the one going on and on about the book. Not me. Because you apparently need someone, not just to generate data, but to tell you what the data means.

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It hardly matters anyway. I said that Gbaji finds stuff to fit his notion of the world and rejects (or ignores) anything else and his big comeback was to say "It's that this study confirms what I'd been observing myself. I frankly don't care what he writes about in his book in addition to this." I mean, I couldn't have crafted a more fitting response if I tried for a week.

And maybe this is just another aspect of the whole "liberals and conservatives speak different languages", because I see nothing wrong with the statement you just quoted. There's nothing wrong with starting by observing behavior and data around you, forming a model of that and postulating an explanation, and then, as time goes by, adding more data which further supports that model. And yes, if/when I run into data which contradicts that model, I take that into account as well. It's not a set in stone thing.

But that's how I think. You seem to just kinda blindly accept what some "expert" tells you. So if Haidt doesn't say "this is what it means", you can't even imagine that meaning. That seems... limited.

Gbaji's post is one giant defense of his own echo chamber where he strokes himself off for not listening to anything that doesn't agree with him. That's bizarre.

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And maybe this is just another aspect of the whole "liberals and conservatives speak different languages"

God, I hope so.

Edit: The most amusing thing about Gbaji's misuse of Appeal to Authority is that I'm not even the one saying that Haidt is correct. I'm just saying that Gbaji is cherry-picking bits of Haidt's work while remaining intentionally ignorant of the whole, while then saying "Look at this liberal guy who said this, uh huh?" Then, when called on it, retracts into some hilarious "I guess you only believe what some 'expert' says!" while desperately clinging to some book review dogma and refusing to investigate the source

Edit: The most amusing thing about Gbaji's misuse of Appeal to Authority is that I'm not even the one saying that Haidt is correct.

You are saying that no one can have any opinion about the data generated by Haidt's study without having read his book though. Which is a position that is itself derived from an appeal to authority fallacy. It rests on the assumption that one is not capable of evaluating data on their own, but must have an authority figure tell them what it all means.

Sorry. I don't buy that. The key point of Haidt's study that I picked up on wasn't even about his whole pillars theory, but was that he had a set of people who self identified as conservative or liberal fill out a questionnaire about a variety of socio-political topics, including not only positions on various issues, but choices of reasons for holding those positions. He then had each group fill out a second identical questionnaire, but this time fill out the answers based on how they thought members of the other group would fill it out. So the liberals answered the questions based on how they thought conservatives would answer, and the conservatives filled it out based on how they thought the liberals would answer.

Then he compared the set of actual conservative answers to how the liberals thought conservatives would answer, and the set of liberal answers to how the conservatives though the liberals would answer. Pretty straightforward test, actually. There is no right or wrong here. No bias. Just testing to see how well each "side" understands the other.

The results showed that conservatives were very very accurate in terms of what they thought liberal positions and reasons were, while liberals were incredibly inaccurate in the other direction. This very much ties into a perception I've made many times on this forum, where it becomes apparent that the liberals on this board not only don't understand my position but are emphatic in their certainty that it's not at all what I just said it was, but is actually something completely different.

Again. I don't care what his political orientation is. I don't care what other theories he spun up around this, after the fact. My interest is that he created a study that provides very clear data that support an observation I've made for many many years.

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I'm just saying that Gbaji is cherry-picking bits of Haidt's work while remaining intentionally ignorant of the whole...

I'm reasonably certain that both of us are ignorant of the whole of Einsteins work, yet both of us are happy to accept things like E=MC^2, and that objects with mass can't exceed the speed of light in normal space. We "cherry pick" facts all the time Joph. I'm not an expert in electrical engineering, but I know to turn off the power before working on an outlet. By your argument, none of us can do anything at all unless we are 100% informed about the "whole" subject.

Any opinions on the whole back and forth on immigration going on right now? How about the whole shutdown that we had, yet no one commented on?

I'm thinking that the Dems are taking a pounding right now. Trump just handed them everything they wanted, and then a bit more, and they're still complaining. Funny thing is that Pelosi sounded today like she'd already had her script written for her, complete with bashing Trump over the poor innocent DACA kids and how evil it would be to deport them, and didn't seem to even be aware that he just proposed providing permanent visa status for all of them already identified under Obama's program, plus another estimated one million that didn't come forward for the executive order.

So... What? Dunno. Just seems like there's a disconnect going on with the Dems right now. They really want to go with a given narrative, but then things change and the narrative doesn't work, but then they don't realize it and go forward anyway. Or, worse, they try to switch, not realizing how foolish they look. Like dummy Schumer (and a few of his Senate minions) trying painfully to blame the shutdown on the GOP, going on about how they had nothing to do with it, because the GOP controls both houses of congress, and the white house, so it's really all their fault. Like we didn't notice the week and a half of every Dem within arms reach of a microphone promising to block the budget deal if a deal on DACA wasn't reached, and didn't notice that a deal on DACA wasn't reached, and didn't notice that the budget was shut down due to a filibuster by the Dems in the Senate.

Call me silly, but if your whole position hinges on "we care so much about DACA that we're willing to shut down the government if something isn't done", you maybe should... and I'm just spit balling here... actually own that position when you go through with it. Stand firm and say "yeah. we shut down the government because we care!". Pretending that you had nothing to do with the shutdown? Really?

They basically ****** off both sides of the issue right there. Folks on the right and middle ****** that they shut down the government (for nothing really). And folks on the left for not actually standing up for DACA when it came down to it. Just... bad.

Unless someone here thinks that tactic was a winner? Love to hear it. You know, just to actually talk about something relevant for once.

Edit: The most amusing thing about Gbaji's misuse of Appeal to Authority is that I'm not even the one saying that Haidt is correct.

You are saying that no one can have any opinion about the data generated by Haidt's study without having read his book though. Which is a position that is itself derived from an appeal to authority fallacy.

You should stop embarrassing yourself until you actually learn what an Appeal to Authority is.

The shutdown was largely a nonevent. Happened on a weekend, was over by lunch on Monday. More people blame it on Republicans (Trump and/or GOP Congress) than on the Democrats. The next couple weeks will be more memorable in regards to DACA than last weekend.

In other news, it's pretty much established by this point that Trump attempted to obstruct justice while president. It'll be an interesting test if the GOP is willing to stand on the side of the law or will continue their assault on law enforcement so they can turn a blind eye to Trump's crimes and whistle while they deregulate.

Edit: The most amusing thing about Gbaji's misuse of Appeal to Authority is that I'm not even the one saying that Haidt is correct.

You are saying that no one can have any opinion about the data generated by Haidt's study without having read his book though. Which is a position that is itself derived from an appeal to authority fallacy.

You should stop embarrassing yourself until you actually learn what an Appeal to Authority is.

I'm well aware of what an Appeal to Authority fallacy is. I'm also aware that there's a tendency for those who fully embrace this fallacy to project it onto others, resulting in them consistently rejecting any argument made that *doesn't* include an appeal to authority as part of the argument (fallacious or not). This is what I'm pointing out about you. Some of us understand that logical fallacies are often only the starting point in a chain of bad logic, not the entirety of it. Because you derive conclusions solely by finding an authority who hands it to you, you assume this is the only way to derive conclusions, and thus reject any conclusion that isn't arrived at via the same means.

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The shutdown was largely a nonevent. Happened on a weekend, was over by lunch on Monday. More people blame it on Republicans (Trump and/or GOP Congress) than on the Democrats.

It was such a non-even that the Democrats had to scramble from their own starting position, to another one, then when they realized that wasn't going to fly, more or less gave in. I get that the polls prior to the shutdown said one thing (and I suspect that's what lead the Dems to choose to filibuster the bill), but those polls were largely (entirely?) based on assumptions prior to the house passage of a bill, and senate Dems filibustering it. When those polls were taken, they were skewed to include an assumption that the shutdown would occur because the GOP would fail to pass any bill at all, and thus be "at fault". Given that the GOP passed a budget bill in the house (and Dems largely voted against it), and the Senate had the votes to pass in the Senate, the *only* reason the government shutdown was due to a Democrat filibuster, that completely changes those results.

And I suspect, that's what the Dems realized on Saturday, when their seemily pre-scripted language about how the GOP controlled both houses and the white house, so it was their fault, fell flat when faced with actual reality. I agree that it was largely a non-event in terms of actual impact, but you're way downplaying who actually "lost" that battle. Hint: It was the Dems.

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The next couple weeks will be more memorable in regards to DACA than last weekend.

Agreed. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. Trump has managed to put a plan on the table which looks to be opposed by both the far right and the far left. Which perhaps bodes well for it. We'll see.

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In other news, it's pretty much established by this point that Trump attempted to obstruct justice while president.

By whom? Repeating the same claim over and over doesn't give it any more weight. Even assuming one interprets Trump's firing of Comey as an attempt to derail the investigation rather than that the guy was just a lose cannon whom neither "side" could trust to be impartial anymore, the mounting evidence that the entire investigation, up to an including the manipulation of evidence to obtain an investigation in the first place, is rapidly painting this less as a president obstructing justice, as a president attempting to defend himself from an illegal and unjust investigation, levied by partisan's inserted into the justice department and FBI by the previous president.

If Trump is obstructing justice now, what was Obama doing back in 2016? It's hard to look at the actions of the FBI and DoJ during 2016 as anything other than partisan weaponizing of those agencies to go after the president's party's enemies (that was Obama btw), to do everything to help his party's candidate win, and then to delegitimize their enemy when she didn't. To ignore that, and then obsess over the extreme actions required to prevent this sort of miscarriage of justice requires a special set of blinders.

Fruit of the poison tree is relevant here. Again, we'll see how this shakes out, but it's looking a heck of a lot like Obama was so desperate to CYA regarding his administrations misuse of federal power, that they're pretty much willing to do anything to try to prevent the facts from being known. The entire Trump investigation looks a lot like the same kind of smoke screen that was the Plame investigation. Back then it was to protect the politically valuable false claim of "Bush lied, and our soldiers died". Today, it's about a host of abuses during the Obama era, which they had hoped would be swept under the rug (or even expanded on in a more permanent fashion) in a Clinton administration, and now they're in desperation mode.

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It'll be an interesting test if the GOP is willing to stand on the side of the law or will continue their assault on law enforcement so they can turn a blind eye to Trump's crimes and whistle while they deregulate.

It's not an assault on law enforcement to go after the bureaucrats placed in high positions over those law enforcement officers and who have consistently put their political agendas ahead of their oaths both as government appointees *and* as law enforcement officers. It's funny that the left trots out this whole "they're going after the good people who work at the FBI" language, but if you were to actually talk to rank and file FBI agents and officers, they see a cancer in their own upper echelon and are on board with this being rooted out. They were furious when Comey failed to recommend indictment of Clinton. Many of them are also very skeptical of the basis for the whole "Russia Collusion" BS. It stinks of made up political claim, and not so much an actual legal investigation.

When the sheriff is corrupt, going after him isn't a disservice to those who wear the badge. I can see how you might mistake this, but no one outside the liberal echo chamber actually think this. Most people see what was going on in the FBI and DoJ as gross political manipulation of the highest order and want it exposed.

Easy test: What exact crime (ie: actual code) does anyone think Trump may have violated here? Where in the law does "collusion with Russia" come in? No one seems to know. Which is your first clue that this isn't really a criminal investigation, but a political witch hunt.

I don't remember you throwing a hissyfit over the obstructionism that caused the shutdown in 2013.

I do seem to remember a lot of other folks on this forum (at least a few of whom are still around) who *did* throw a hissyfit over the shutdown back then. So I found it interesting that no one among that group decided to make a big deal this time around. I don't usually go out of my way to create a new topic, or comment on some new event that has occurred. I usually let others set the topics, and I comment on them. And yes, it's interesting to see when the other posters on this forum decide to bring something up, and when they don't.

I will point out that the GOP at least had a tenuous "this is budget related" reason behind their decision to block the budget CR back then (the whole "individual mandate in the ACA has been declared a tax rather than a fine, and thus falls under a budgeted item now rather than a regulatory bill" bit). They still got reamed for it back then. The Dems had no such claim at all this time around though. This was a straight up "We're going to hold the budget process hostage if we don't get what we want on this other, totally non-budget related thing".

I'll repeat my earlier point that I think the Dems were counting on the GOP failing to pass anything in the house, so they could paint this as a GOP failure, while still getting their DACA point across with their threat to block any vote unless a deal was reached. Then, when the house GOP did pass a bill on Thursday, they got into a weird split brain thing, where they went forward with a filibuster in the Senate to appease the far left, while also simultaneously trying to paint the narrative as though the GOP had failed to pass a bill in the house (complete with pre-printed posters to hold up in front of the cameras, which looked pretty laughable given the actual circumstances of the shutdown). Predictably, this didn't go so well.

The 2013 shutdown was the first one in 17 years and went on for over two weeks. The 2018 shutdown was the first one in five years and took place over a weekend. I can't imagine any reason why they didn't receive equal discussion (there's also the fact that more than five people were posting here in 2013)

Any opinions on the whole back and forth on immigration going on right now? How about the whole shutdown that we had, yet no one commented on?

Thoughts are pretty similar to the previous times; still think it's silly we "shut down the government" in this country. If a new budget isn't agreed upon things should be funded at the previous levels until one is. So long as we can agree on something every 5-6 years inflation shouldn't be too much of a problem (or you know, build those increases into law in if you're super picky about it, whatever). There's no reason we should stop paying contractors and employees just because politicians have people to pander to.

The 2013 shutdown was the first one in 17 years and went on for over two weeks. The 2018 shutdown was the first one in five years and took place over a weekend. I can't imagine any reason why they didn't receive equal discussion (there's also the fact that more than five people were posting here in 2013)

I don't feel like going back and reading through relevant threads from back then, but I'm reasonably certain that we had discussions about the shutdown, and the potential of a shutdown, well before the actual shutdown occurred. We didn't know how long this shutdown was going to be on Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday, or until mid day Monday, so plenty of opportunities for someone to post about it, if they'd wanted to. No one did.

I'm just making a comment about what the remaining posters on this forum decide they want to post about. It's not like it's surprising that you'd want to avoid a topic that makes "your side" look so bad. Human nature and all that.

And yes, it's interesting to see when the other posters on this forum decide to bring something up, and when they don't.

So you're not defending the liberals here like you did the conservatives back then. Just checking.

As I already stated, back then there was at least a somewhat legitimate budget related issue at stake here. The Dems didn't even pretend that they were blocking the vote because of something actually in the bill itself. In fact, they were quite clear that the reason they were blocking the budget CR was because the didn't get a bill on DACA.

Any opinions on the whole back and forth on immigration going on right now? How about the whole shutdown that we had, yet no one commented on?

Thoughts are pretty similar to the previous times; still think it's silly we "shut down the government" in this country. If a new budget isn't agreed upon things should be funded at the previous levels until one is. So long as we can agree on something every 5-6 years inflation shouldn't be too much of a problem (or you know, build those increases into law in if you're super picky about it, whatever). There's no reason we should stop paying contractors and employees just because politicians have people to pander to.

The problem is that we haven't agreed upon new funding levels for so long that most of the scheduled budgeted items have run out, and we are stuck passing continuing resolutions to do just what you're saying: Keep funding at current levels for X more time". And yes, some programs have scaled spending increases built into the laws that fund them as well. Without getting too far into a detailed description of discretionary and non-discretionary budgeting, let me just say that it's not that simple. For discretionary items, the norm is for the president to send a requested budget to the congress (what he wants to spend money on), and congress sends him back whatever budget bill they actually pass.

The thinking is that the president (executive branch really) is actually spending the money, but congress controls the purse strings. This is part of the checks and balances built into our system. Over time congress has created "non-discretionary" spending, which the president more or less can't refuse to spend money on. These tend to be social spending programs, and longer term programs (social security, medicare, etc). But yeah, just about everything else is subject to what is in theory a year to year budgeting process.

How the budget became such a political football is a whole topic in itself. I'll also point out that what we call a "government shutdown", doesn't really shut down the government. It stops funding for what are considered "non-essential" programs. I suppose at least part of the philosophical issue here is that conservatives tend to believe that the federal government shouldn't be doing anything that's "non-essential" in the first place. And yeah, from there it gets progressively more contentious.

I'm just making a comment about what the remaining posters on this forum decide they want to post about. It's not like it's surprising that you'd want to avoid a topic that makes "your side" look so bad. Human nature and all that.

You're as ham-handed as ever

Again, it happened over a weekend. I personally barely post on the weekends (****, I go days between posting during the week). There's a tiny handful of people who still post here as opposed to 2013. If you need to jerk yourself off by comparing the two events, go for it.

Yes, Gbaji, you absolutely cracked the case. I didn't post about it here because I was afraid of making "my side" look bad in front of, uh, Lolgaxe, Bijou and maybe SPG. Way to solve that mystery, Slylock Fox.

I don't feel like going back and reading through relevant threads from back then, but I'm reasonably certain that we had discussions about the shutdown, and the potential of a shutdown, well before the actual shutdown occurred

Yes, Gbaji, you absolutely cracked the case. I didn't post about it here because I was afraid of making "my side" look bad in front of, uh, Lolgaxe, Bijou and maybe SPG. Way to solve that mystery, Slylock Fox.

logaxe isn't capitalized, Jophiel.

n00bI was gonna call you a noob, but you mentioned me, so there's hope for you yet!!

Professor stupidmonkey wrote:

Wow, way to make me feel insignificant, Joph.

You have friends, stupidmonkey. Jophiel just isn't one of them.

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Jophiel wrote:

Last week, I saw a guy with an eyepatch and a gold monocle and pointed him out to Flea as one of the most awesome things I've seen, ever. If I had an eyepatch and a gold monocle, I'd always dress up as Mr. Peanut but with a hook hand and a parrot.